Well as I've stated earily in the thread, Im very disappointed with the Team selection made, Here is a quick summery of my reasonings.
Do the selectors really want 4x to die? By their choices you would have to think so. If top riders spend their own coin to go to the national rounds, they should be rewarded for their efforts. Guys like Terry Scarr and Alex Lloyd rode well all season and beat pretty much everyone on the list yet they dont get on.
Conversely you have riders on the list like Mick or Bryn who put the 4x behind the Dh in order of preferance getting the big chance.
Here is the current 4x world rankings according to the UCI, It shows pretty clearly who's putting the effort in
http://www.uci.ch/ucinet/uci.asp?page=results&discipline=mtb&ryear=2007&ridercategory=me&l=eng
We all know the Joanne Fox situation is a joke and she should be in, so instead im going to tell a little story on missing out...
Back in the day I was a stong Sport climber, my training goal was to compete in the (Asian)X games one day. In 2000 I finally got the chance after finishing 3rd in the national series. When I when to the Sport climbing Federation they said they had decided not to send a team so I would have to wait till the next year. (they decided we weren't good enough, even though I was consistantly beating the climber who came 5th the year before.)
I accepted this (I was unbelievably pissed off but what could I do...) and started training for the next year. 2 weeks after the first comp of 2001 I ruptured my PCL, effectively ending my Climbing career, I never did get to the X games...
I guess the moral of the story is people have dreams, and they strive to make those dreams happen. In a sport like Mountain Biking there is only a limited window of oppertunity to get to the top, you have to take that chance while you can because you never know what tommorrow will bring.
Mtba's job is to get the best possible representative team to Fort William, they are failing to do that, they should explain why.